High Card Bluff (House of Cards Series 5)

(2) An Unexpected Alliance

It had taken Tomas' mother Maya almost a month after Salali's funeral to finally ask Tom to take over the rally case. She was an astonishingly effective PI, used frequently by various law enforcement agencies for covert stakeouts and recon as she still fit into the slightly seedier side of any city she lived in. But his mother was also in her 40s and stuck out like the mom she was amongst the crowds this case called to linger in.

Once the weather had cleared enough for the races to start again, he'd known it was inevitable. Mainly because he was getting a lot of service calls out to them anyways on behalf of the garage, and this was giving him the chance to hit two birds with one stone; his mother loved efficiency like that.

And like with all seductions, it took a while to go from simply being called out to fix the issues of the moment, to having a regular invite out, and finally landing as an established face at all the events. But by April he was collecting all the information his madre could want; about the cars that is. He was still having trouble finding the angle needed to land an invite to the poker table where all the dealings were made. It took money, reputation, influence, or sheer dumb luck to be dealt in to that table and Tom had heard of some of the 'buy-ins' required. The man running the deals and the parties, Jerred, was a snake just waiting to strike out at whatever he could sink his fangs into.

Unfortunately for Tom he was seen as just the mechanic and lacked the funds to bribe in. His reputation was likewise not enough to interest Jerred, and he had no network in this crowd to pull on to talk on his behalf. He was stuck trying to work an angle in but none had presented themselves.

And then his plans were seriously derailed by the brat.

"Adrianna!" the bellow drew even his attention from the car he'd just finished on, and he rolled his ass out from underneath to see what it was about women with that name that made men yell so much. "Adrianna I need you up here." It was the useless peacock he'd seen strutting about trying to impress Jerred with his money and flash car.

Tomas wasn't surprised the idiot had managed to talk his way into the game upstairs, he looked like he had a lot of money to lose after all, but all thought of that fell out of his head as he saw that it wasn't just any Adrianna the idiot had been yelling for. Oh no, somehow the bufón (buffoon) had managed to get an invite to the table upstairs, and now he was calling out to none other than Adrianna Vega; the brat was walking into the lion's den.

There wasn't a single good thing he could think of happening if she went in that room right now, and the little idiot was just gliding up the stairs while everyone else watched in oblivious fascination. Including Tom, who was on the other side of the damn room still, with a crowd of people between them.

Tom was moving as soon as the thought occurred to him, and he moved as swiftly as possible for a man his size in a crowd this packed. Everyone had packed together, trying to eavesdrop from around the base of the stairs, and Tom could only thank god that the brat was silhouetted in the still open door. He'd have enough gray hairs from tonight as it was.

Jerred's satisfied laugh added a few more as Tom made it through the crowd to the actual stairs and everyone below heard why Jerred was so damn happy, "No one would take that ante Adrianna, though he did try. So he bet the one thing we'd be interested in; a strip show from you in the back room."

He was going to have to kill that man, him and the bufón that brought her here. It was the principle of the thing. Tomas was the oldest out of 'the kids' and he knew it was his job to keep the others safe, even if the brat had literally sashayed her ass right into this situation. But before he could ruin whatever reputation he'd built at the rallies to go save her, Adrianna reminded him that she was not a passive woman.